Another Vivid Descriptive Passage

We have become used to certain recurring well observed details in Poul Anderson's descriptions of natural scenery:

sunsets
the sky/"heaven"
colors
snowpeaks
forests
birds in flight
sounds
other sensations

The following passage, set near the Time Patrol's Pleistocene Pyrenees Lodge, is notable:

"Sunset washed gold across white peaks and ridges. The lodge stood at no great altitude, but snowline was lower than in the birthtime of [Everard and Wanda]. Timberline was also; around them reached alpine meadow , intensely green, flecked with small summer flowers. A little way upslope, several ibex lifted horns and watched them, alertly but without fear. The sky, greenish in the west, deepening through azure overhead to purple in the east, was full of homebound wings. Cries drifted down through silence and gathering chill...The air tasted of purity." (The Shield Of Time, pp. 293-294)

Five colors, including two shades of green; two appeals to the sense of hearing, bird cries and silence; two other sensations, chill and taste, the latter even though the characters do not eat in this passage! Would completely unpolluted air taste pure? I think that I have read that Anderson deliberately appealed to several senses in descriptive passages. If not Anderson, then it was a suggestion about what writers should do. In action-adventure fiction, we read through the descriptive passages quickly to get to the action but they can and should be reread with close attention and increased pleasure.